A man emerges from the dungeon portal. He's wearing a plain white T-shirt, black slacks and a long black jacket, and heavy-duty leather boots. Blue ice shards follow and surround him, floating with the same purpose his steps carry, but one by one they start melting away into nothing. At the same time, new ice shards appear, as big as skateboards, forming a set of floating steps he climbs down to reach the floor from the portal, and then those, too, disappear.

He has a calm, serene look on his face, and when he spots the TV helicopter with a camera crew filming him from above he offers them a smile for a second.

"...wow."

    "I know, right?"

"It's one thing to see him on TV but—"

    "He's gorgeous, right? I'm so jealous."

"I think I'm in love."

    "Are you taking pictures?? Take pictures!!!"

"—right! I will!"

After a few more seconds he lifts his right hand to eye level, index and middle fingers pressed together and pointing forward, and slides them down in the air, which causes a holographic screen to appear floating before him. He taps at it, gives the cameras another smile and a wave, then presses a button that makes him disappear in a flash of light.

    "Does he really look that perfect from closer up?"

"It's like he walked out of a magazine or something. Aren't espers meant to get, like, super messed up after using their powers, if they don't have partners? He went in solo, didn't he?"

    "That's Lee Tae-gun for you. Backlashes are for other people."

"Seriously. —anyway, the plane is going to be late, obviously, but I'll be there soon."

    "Cool, see you!"

"See you, unnie," she says, hanging up and watching the portal to the dungeon slowly dissipate into the air.

Lee Tae-gun appears in the foyer of his isolation site, his forced smile melting away with his composure, and he doesn't make it to his bedroom before collapsing.

Kim Hye-jin is resolutely not reading any news articles, at all. None of them. They are all off limits, because any one of them might be about her, and even some of the tabloid-like headlines are enough to set off her already extremely frayed temper. Best to just swear off the whole thing for the next month, or two, or three, and tolerate being a little bit out of the loop while she puts the pieces of her life back together. This will not be made better by setting anything on fire, even if she might feel better afterwards. While she's a good enough esper to not endanger anything or anyone with any totally justified fiery outbursts, she - has some habits she needs to break, because the consequences of backlash are now actually a real concern for her.

She's got a contract with a South Korean guild that's supposed to maybe fix that, but even they are a bit dubious about this being something solid. In fact, she's not convinced the guy this guild wants to set her up with even has backlash, which leaves her kind of in the lurch, doesn't it. Apparently the man has also avoided any and all partnerships with anyone in the past half decade. So. He's probably some kind of alien, and she shouldn't expect it to work out. She'll try anyway, out of sheer professional integrity, but if it fails, she won't be particularly broken up about it. It's mostly an excuse, anyway. They're offering her transportation to South Korea from Japan, a generous salary, a neat little not-at-fault exit clause for if this doesn't work out (which they really seem to expect it to), and if she likes the guild itself she can get a new contract with them after. That makes it the best way to stop sharing a country with her previous partner as fast as possible.

So she'll attempt to make it work with the some-kind-of-alien, and if this means she has to tank her own backlash for the next year or something, fine. She'll live.

The foyer of Quasar Guild HQ is clean and professional but not bare or too utilitarian; they have an image to uphold, after all, and it wouldn't do to look anything but welcoming.

One of the walls is taken over by a cute small café with a few sitting and standing tables, while the center is dominated by a beautiful fountain with pretty karp swimming in it, surrounded by benches. The doors outside are glass set on glass and the reception desk is across the hall from them. The last wall has four elevators sectioned off from the rest of the room by swing turnstiles which require either a visitor's pass or registered biometrics to pass through, and heavy-duty security people stand at attention by the turnstiles. The floor is marble and the walls are polished steel, and there are two muted TVs hanging behind the reception showing two different news channels, one of which is showing a section on South Korea's only S-ranked combat esper, Lee Tae-gun—a.k.a. her prospective partner.

The area is moderately busy, with a few groups of people having coffee or standing around chatting or just sitting by the fountain admiring it.

The teleport she accepts does not drop her immediately into any kind of social situation. Which is good, she's pretty sure everyone involved would hate that. She has a courtesy half-hour before they are going to put the espers in the same room together and see if they can successfully make nice. So she checks in at reception, gets herself a cup of coffee and a muffin from the café, and munches it while she informs her aunt that she made it safely to the appropriate country. Apparently there was some kind of something at the international airport? Anyway, she was teleported, it's fine. Thank you for your hospitality while I get my feet under me, looking forward to seeing you tonight, etc.

Once she finishes with her muffin and coffee (both pretty good, actually, having an in-house café is nice) she heads up to the office the meetup is supposed to happen. She's early, of course.

She's intercepted by a man with long green hair tied in a ponytail and brown eyes behind large, thin-rimmed glasses. "Kim Hye-jin-nim? My name is Min Woo-young," he says, offering his hand to shake.

Oh, a handshake, that's - okay, sure, yeah, she came prepared to handshake today, if admittedly not with this person. This is going to be the first of her cultural hiccups, isn't it. Well, she wanted to not be in Japan anymore. "Pleasure to meet you, Min Woo-young-shi. I'm not too early, am I? I can wander around the headquarters a little while longer, if that would be better...?"

Min Woo-young is also, it seems, an esper, but they are so not compatible it's not even funny. Whatever his backlash is, it has nothing to do with hers.

"No, no, you're great, it's great that you're here early, actually. Tae-gun-sunbae will be here soon, too, so I can introduce you two." He starts walking to lead the way to the meeting room.

Yep, see, this is why Japan does bowing instead of handshakes for most circumstances. That wasn't physically uncomfortable, exactly, but wow it sure is a thing to get a blatant 'not at all compatible.' Sort of like walking up to a closed door, or maybe a sidewalk abruptly ending in front of her. She supposes she'll have to get used to it.

"Sounds good, thank you." She will dutifully follow. Look at her, so easygoing and not at all like the fire breathing princess the Japanese media portrays her as.

"So have you just arrived in Seoul? Anything you're looking forward to?" he asks, conversationally.

"Just arrived, yes. I mailed my luggage ahead, it's safely arrived at my aunt's. I'll be staying with her for the next little while, and one of my cousins is excited to show me the sights, so I'll be letting her lead me around."

"You're not staying at any of the guild lodgings?"

Nooooope, she wants a life outside of your guild, thank you, she has already experienced some major downsides to letting professional and personal lives intertwine! She's not saying that.

"I haven't seen my father's family in years! I couldn't pass up this opportunity to reconnect," she demurs.

He can read between the lines well enough. "Will you be using a guild-provided silo or your own? —I don't have any sort of official interest, to be clear, I'm just some guy."

"Depends on how things work out with my prospective partner, doesn't it? But I'd had my own, in Tokyo." And boy did that turn out to be a good idea, didn't it, that she could just lock Fujita Hideyoshi right out and have no one able to do a damn thing about it. No pressure or 'what happened' or 'well have you tried talking to him again' or anything that might make her set anything on fire. An isolation room that is actually isolating! Imagine that! No corporate meddling to speak of.

She's trying to be casual and friendly, but: yeah this is in fact a sore subject for her, so please stop pushing.

He didn't mean to push! He was just curious. 

"Yeah, that makes sense."

"So, Tae-gun-sunbae can be a bit difficult."

Yep. She got that from how many prospective partners he's gone through, how much they're paying her to be here, and the very generous no-fault exit clause on the contract. Not to mention the teleport. That is not normal guild recruitment behavior.

"So I've heard." Well, surmised, but same thing. "Anything I should be aware of?"

"Just... don't take it personally? He's not gonna insult you or anything but he's... very guarded."

Guarded honestly sounds so great to her right now, though? After everything. Yes, keeping each other at arms' length sounds fantastic, sign her up. She doesn't say that, either.

"I'm fine keeping our relationship strictly professional," she says, instead, which is almost the same thing.

"No, umm..." This is awkward. "He might—probably will—outright refuse to work with you at all."

Yeah, she figured that, too.

"... So, even if we don't do the typical esper partner thing of mutual backlash reduction, working together can nonetheless reduce it for both of us even if we never touch? From an efficiency of power used standpoint. Magnification of each other's strengths and covering each other's weaknesses and whatnot."

"Oh yeah, but prez—I mean the guild president is calling in a favour to ask him to actually work together. ...backlash management might be harder but we'll—ah we're here." Here's a door to a nice meeting room with some comfortable chairs and a beautiful table. "Anyway, we'll figure it out?"